


Tonight, You Will Sleep For Good

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Gen, Non-Canonical Violence, TRIGGER WARNING!!!!, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:48:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9604667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: What happens when your world stops, and what happens to the people who have to pick up your pieces, and their own pieces too.





	1. Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> it's 4 am bye
> 
> [lmao this was barely edited and un beta'd jsyk it's probably shitty as all hell i was just listening to my love by sia and i was like BITCH]

The moments were quick, fleeting. Shouts from both sides split through the air. The smell of fallen soldiers permeated through the ship, and everything was slick with blood and sweat. People were yelling directions and commands through the comms and in the air, lost to the sound of guns being fired and swords clashing and the distinctive  _ schick _ sound that comes with plunging your sword into someone’s abdomen, and the subsequent squelching noise as you pull it out. 

 

Lance was leveling his gun, aiming his gun, pulling the trigger, felling a Galran, starting again. Again, again, repeat it on instinct. He faintly registered Keith just in front of him, cutting down the soldiers that failed to be hit by Lance’s shots. The adrenaline thrumming through his veins shook his hands, corrupted his gun, threw off his aim. He needed to calm down. It’s hard to when a Galran soldier’s blood-slicked body falls onto you, nearly making you fall with it.    
  


A sharp- almost gunshot-like- sound resonated through the room, stilling time for a few moments. The stench of blood still hung heavy in the air, now accompanied with a bright splash of the dark liquid.

 

For a few brutal ticks, Lance, as well as those around him, registered that it was he who had been hit. A searing pain cut through his chest, his body acknowledging that,  _ wow, I am on the ground, there is a bullet in my chest, and I’m definitely bleeding very hard. This is definitely my blood.  _

 

“Lance!” Keith shrieked, nearly dropping his bayard to go help the other, until he was almost beheaded by a sword swinging at him.

 

_ This isn’t such a bad way to die, really,  _ Lance thought, tears settling as well as the pain settling in his chest, as if it had been there his whole life.  _ I mean, I get to die doing what I love, dying. The other paladins don’t have to worry about carrying around a deadweight like me, someone who can barely keep their own food down. I hope they find Shiro… with me dying, they woulda lost two black paladins in what. Two months? Three? Hell, I don’t know. Time is hard in space. _

 

After the shot, the frenzy of the battle seemed to have slowed for him. Everyone else became sluggish, his thoughts pushed through his instincts, he began to climb back into the vast expanse of his mind. 

 

He climbed back out, however, when a shadow loomed over him, a bright red island in a sea of… other bright red islands.

 

_ I’m tired. I want to go home to Mama, I want to sleep in her arms again. I want to sleep, forever. I’m just so, so tired. I’ve done my job, can I leave now? I want to die, please. _

 

“Hang in there, hang in there, Lance. We’ll- we’ll get you to a healing pod, you’ll be right as rain, you’ll be okay,” Keith put on a thinly-veiled brave face, tears streaming down to pool in his mouth, ruining the (albeit weak) illusion.

 

“Keith… Keith, I don’t want to live. I don’t wanna ‘hang in there.’ I’m so sorry, but I’m just… I’m just so tired,” he smiles back bitterly, feeling blood trickle out of the corner of his mouth as he speaks.

 

“Lance, no- no, don’t say things like that. You’ll be okay, right? You’ll be okay?” The tears just came faster from Keith, dropping onto Lance in a steady drip, drip, drip. The world stilled, it was just them.

 

“I’ve done my job. I protected the universe, and I loved my family, and I protected my family. I went to space! I met all of you, I-” his sentence was punctured by a wet cough, followed by a larger amount of blood being dislodged from his body. Blood flooded his left lung, making it nearly impossible for him to speak.

 

“I love y-you Keith. I love all of,” he coughed out blood, taking a wheezing breath with his one operational lung, “-you. You guys may not have loved me back, as much, and I may not have been important, but that’s okay. Because- because I’m dying, and everything is okay right now.”

 

“N-no, Lance, no, it’s not, we can get you to a healing pod, we can- Allura, Allura do you- can you hear me through the comms? We’re not- Lance got- Lance got- he got sh-shot, through the, uh, through the heart, and- and I think one of his l-lungs, too, and he’s dying and we need to get him to a pod, like right now. Allura? ALLURA! ANSWER ME, GODDAMNIT! LANCE IS FUCKING DYING!” The tears are like an ocean now, mixing with the blood and the sweat to drown Lance, to drown them all.

 

“I’m okay. I’ll be okay. It’s just time for me to go to bed, that’s all. It’s time to go to bed, because I’m,” he pauses to hack up more blood. The liquid pouring out of his wound began to speed up, too. He was bleeding out fast. “I’m tired. Oh god, Keith, I’m so tired. Goodn…” 


	2. Picking Up Your Pieces

He was given a funeral, a traditional human one. To a point, anyways.

 

The funeral was grim. Nobody spoke, for fear that the tears would start anew. Lance had been clothed in his signature jacket, his body- his  _ corpse _ \- stripped of the paladin armor, washed of blood, and dried. 

 

Hunk and Coran together had made a small, escape pod-like casket, big enough for Lance, and any other things the others wished to give to him in his death. 

 

At the funeral itself, no grand speeches had been given, no jokes cracked, no flowers, dancing, nothing. It was just the five- four- three paladins, what with Shiro missing and Lance dead, and then Allura and Coran. They were all silently crying, each blaming themselves for his death.   
  


They each went up to the casket in turn, saying what they wanted to say, paying their respects, giving him a farewell gift. After all that was done, they sent his body out through the airlock, into space. To float forevermore, resting with the stars. 

 

The remaining five watched him go. Every so often, someone’s mood would lighten just a little bit, and they would turn around to make note of how strangely somber the mood was given Lance’s attitude in life, only to realize the exact person they had wanted to tell this to was the one lying, cold and breathless, in a coffin only feet away. This dampened the mood again, quickly snuffing out the small spark.

 

It was torture, but it would probably go on for years.


	3. It Falls Apart

They had found Shiro. He was found, he was returned, he was unscathed. Save for a new, small scar on his finger, he was fine. The details of why he left and what happened during that time are no matter to anyone, and only served as brief conversation fodder. Nobody felt very talkative without Lance.

 

“So…” Shiro said, making awkward hand gestures to fill the silence during breakfast, the morning after he had returned, “where’s Lance?”

 

Everything came to an abrupt halt. Keith dropped his spoon into his bowl, mouth hanging open, with half chewed goo in his mouth. Pidge and Hunk stopped their quiet comparison of their latest creations. Allura let go of the mouse she was holding, and Coran halted in his cooking.

 

“...What?” he asked. To him, it was a perfectly innocuous question, a simple questioning as to where his teammate was. He wasn’t there, he couldn’t possibly know.

 

At that, Keith burst into tears, his body shuddering, doubled over his goo. Coran rushed over to comfort him, guiding him up out of his seat and out of the room.

 

“Shiro… um…” Pidge started.

 

“We didn’t know how to tell you… hell, we can’t even t-talk about it yet, some of us can’t even think of it, but…” Hunk continues, leaving the rest to Allura.

 

Shiro’s mind began to spiral down, and he felt like he was about to throw up. Sweat appeared on his forehead, and his eyes widened, tears forming, blurring his vision.

 

“Lance is… He’s dead. He was k-killed in battle, by the Galra. Shot through his heart, and left lung. I’m so sorry, Shiro. You didn’t get to say goodbye to him,” Allura finishes through tears of her own.

 

Shiro begins to gag, feeling stomach acid rise out of his stomach, pulling the contents of his breakfast up with it. Soon, it feels like he’s pushing all of his innards out onto the floor, green splattering all over the immaculate tiling. 

 

_ Lance is dead.  _

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> catch me (slides on shades) cryin in (slides shades off) hell

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry


End file.
